SLAVERY FOR THE UNEMPLOYED IN 2010

I have faced long term unemployment several times in my life, though nothing prepared me for the latest schemes the Government, and various greedy fat cat employers have concocted, the Flexible New Deal (FND) work trials programme, namely, making me, and 1,000’s of others literally work for nothing, other than our dole, (now called Jobseeker’s Allowance).

The FND scheme is run through a series of supposedly independent job brokers like JHP Employability and A4E to name but two, (JHP being my own brokers), and involves an intense twelve week mandatory programme of activity designed to get long term unemployed people back into employment, and this 12 week course includes up to four weeks equally mandatory job placement, in which I am not to receive the National Minimum Wage, but just my Jobseeker’s Allowance (JSA). Refusal, or failure to complete the work trial, means my JSA will stop.

ARGUMENTS IN FAVOUR

There will be many applauding the initiative, after all, it means I have to work for my JSA, and for four weeks I can’t be classed as a lazy dole scrounger, feeding off the tax-payers, and it will give me something to do rather than lying in bed all day. It might even give me skills and experience that might lead to future employment, possibly with the very firm that hires me through the Flexible New Deal.

THE CASE AGAINST

WRONG! Like most of the unemployed, I am no scrounger. Looking for work absorbs a considerable amount of my time and I often happily work in the voluntary sector.

The scheme is failing in all of the above areas. The employers who buy into the scheme are keeping on only 30% of those unemployed forced to participate in the imitative. That means a staggering 70% are used for four weeks and promptly spat back onto the dole with barely a ‘thank you for coming.’

The companies using staff hired through the FND are not training us, or giving us new or useful skills, but exploiting us for mundane, routine jobs that virtually anyone can do, shelf-stacking, glass-collecting, tidying up, sweeping, etc. Our presence over a month, to be replaced quickly by the next set of unfortunate proles sent by the job brokers, means that the ordinary unemployed won’t get hired if they apply for a job at normal pay rates, and established staff with the companies will resent the temps who help prevent them getting overtime or bonuses for taking on such menial duties. The more firms take on the FND work trial people, the less jobs there will be for real employees, and that will add to the ranks of the unemployed, and mean more people having to go on the scheme in the long run, so the trials will ultimately become self-perpetuating. It will be a matter of time before they move from being inflicted on only the long term unemployed to being imposed on those who start signing on within weeks of them losing their previous job. .

The firms doing such hiring are mostly companies earning vast profits, ASDA, Tescoes, etc, who can easily afford to pay an honest wage instead of exploiting the jobless for sweat-shop wages in this fashion. The brokers are keeping full lists of such firms a secret, even from the unemployed, so exposure to the Internet and media of companies involved is essential to any protest against such schemes. The company’s involved need to be named and shamed.

Another kind of firm used is the religious body, such as the Young Men’s Christian Association, (YMCA). Its Christian roots immediately serve as a deterrent to atheists and anyone from non-Christian faiths like Islam or Judaism, etc.

The YMCA, ridiculed in a popular song by the Village People, over its homophobic attitude, was once, as its name states, exclusively a male institution. Only pressure from equal opportunities campaigners led to women being allowed in through their doors, and many women are still offended by the sexist element in the Y Men’s’ CA name. A few, if unemployed and sent to work there, might justifiably refuse on moral grounds. However, declining an instruction (order) to take a month long placement with them could lead to temporary or permanent. Benefit stoppages.

The law in Britain states that all British employers must pay staff a national minimum wage, but this employment Work For Your Benefits (WFYB) scheme contradicts and contravenes such laws on every level, by forcing full time work on staff for as little as $60.00 a week. The scheme needs scrapping for that reason alone if others reasons were not present to, and anyone already pressured into participation in such a programme should have their true earnings, the NMW backdated and reimbursed.

The firms using the initiative are not being philanthropists helping us out of long-term unemployment out of the kindness of their blessed hearts. They pay the jobless absolutely nothing but receive large payments (way above normal benefit payment sums) to take part in the scheme, £1,000’s per each unemployed person placed with them on the scheme – they profit for nothing, and the tax-payer pays far more than they would if the government just left the jobless to find work in their own time. Which amounts to punishment for the long term unemployed. That’s right – Tescoes don’t pay me my dole – you pay Tescoes a profit way above my dole, even if you don’t shop there yourself. Those who object to paying tax to help the unemployed should really think about how much more they are paying in tax to contribute to this useless scheme.

I welcome any practical assistance in getting me back into real work, but this scheme is not practical, does not give me a true job with any employer and will cost the tax-payers a great deal more than it would if the government did nothing whatsoever.

Worse, the hours for the scheme are for full time employment, of 30 hours per week leaving the slaves affected no time to look for other employment that might actually get them / us / me, off the JSA permanently. During the work trial period, JSA is stopped, and replaced with a payment masquerading as a training allowance (where no training is provided), which is paid to (a remarkable coincidence) exactly the same sum as a JSA payment. JSA is restored as before on completion of such a placement, when the slave returns to square one no better off than before. The only other money the jobseeker will receive is travelling expenses and in a few cases a modest lunch-allowance. .

In Scotland and Wales, many have protested angrily about the scheme, but in England it has been largely allowed to creep in with little real protest or outrage.

THINGS TO DO

Protest to the Government, locally and nationally, as well as to the media. Help explain to everyone just what these schemes mean in real terms and money, to the unemployed, to the tax-payer and the established workers in firms who are replacing them with temporary staff drawn in through the schemes.

If you are a union representative, warn your members what these schemes can do to your workforce. Take industrial action if your members call for it in protest.

Firms promoting the initiative, and companies paying staff to work for less than the National Minimum wage need to be named and shamed publicly.

If you are sent on the scheme, work diligently and politely, but do nothing beyond the hours demanded of you. Under no circumstances volunteer for overtime. Staff there will receive time and half payments for extra duties. You will get nothing above your JSA equivalent income. Be sure that the firm alerts you to its health & safety policies just as they would with any other employee.

IS YOU IN DANGER OF BEING SENT ONTO THE SCHEME?

It depends what stage of unemployment you have reached, with the stages attained from the length of time you have been out of work.

STAGE 1

It all depends on how long you have been out of work, and claiming benefits like JSA. If you have just left school and / or only just started signing on, you will be more or less left to find work on your own initiative. This is what happens at Stage One. You will have to fill in forms to register a claim, and you should expect a regular fortnightly signing on session, and though expected to show evidence of job-hunting activity, this is generally not particularly heavily enforced.

STAGE 2

Now, having been out of work for three months or so, things get a little stricter, but essentially the same rules apply. Your signing times may change, and you may be given seemingly random lengthy interviews with a Job centre employee to assess your job-seeking strategies. Your job seeking activity may come under closer scrutiny.

STAGE 3

You’ve been claiming Jobseekers for six months now. Things get more serious again. Meetings with advisors increase in frequency and you may have to declare a set job plan, outlining the kind of jobs you seek, and agree to looking for anything from 6 to 12 jobs per week, and present evidence of this. The newspapers, websites and other sources of vacancy ads you use will come under some study.

STAGE 4

If you have been out of work and claiming JSA or other benefits, including disability allowances, for over a year (up to six months for the under 25’s) you may well be sent onto job broker training and advice schemes. They are not something you can choose to opt out of. They are mandatory (a favourite word the JSA folk will use from here on in). Job-brokers who will help create or update a CV, and offer patronizing and often useless tips on improving your job-hunting skills. Some of the services they offer will be genuinely practical, i.e., access to computers for job hunting purposes, printing and photocopying of CV’s, free phone calls, letters and stamps in exchanges with potential employers. Such organizations work best when you do the job-hunting yourself, but use their provided resources. As they can only help you for 20 weeks, they will however increasingly lose patience with you as they get a commission for getting you into work. If you leave them as jobless as when you arrived, they get nothing, and may dislike you and blame you for that. As time runs out for them, they often resort to sending you for each and every interview going, in the desperate hope that something will work. You can find yourself sent to far off locations for interviews with firms you have no qualifications or experience for working with. The Job brokers half-expect sheer charm and the posturing they teach to be enough to win the employers over for you. It often fails to impress.

If you tell the job brokers of vacancies you learn about yourself, they often send several other unemployed people on their books to apply for work at the same company, increasing your competition. Don’t tell them of forthcoming interviews you’ve sorted out for yourself until they have taken place or deadlines have passed for new applications.

If you get a job that pays more than your JSA allowance, or work more than 16 hours per week you will be expected to sign off. If the new job lasts thirteen weeks or more but then ends you are put back to Stage One when you re-sign on. If however the job lasts 12 weeks or less you will be put back on Stage 4 where you left off before. The job will be regarded as inconsequential to proceedings.

The job-brokers are mostly nice and well meaning but clueless folk with a great deal of misguided faith in their own abilities. They talk like textbooks, often parroting the same phrases over and over, like walking, talking self-help books. One broker I had read out lengthy extracts from Nelson Mandella to us, as a confidence and hope building exercise. Football analogies are frequently used as trite and patronizing examples of good teamwork.

I had asked Standguide about call centre work, and they put me on an interesting, even a fun, course in such work, and awarded me a certificate of merit for it on completion. I have yet to find a call centre that regards that qualification as remotely vocational or useful. Most have never even heard of it. A genuine City & Guilds course in some labour skills from call centre work, forklift truck driving, driving in general or a second language, etc, would be of true help to the unemployed. What groups like Peopleserve and Standguide offer is sadly often of no use whatsoever.

People can end up long term unemployed for many reasons. The people sent to them can vary in level of need, from the illiterate and poor in English, who sincerely need, and often genuinely receive more attention, to those well experienced, but with skills that are often redundant in the modern job market. These poor wretches will often end up hearing the same information over again, or being treated as if they too were illiterate, and old hat information will be presented continuously as though it is fresh news.

My broker often printed out addresses of firms for me to consider applying to, and repeated the same addresses many times. Many of their attempts to assist you do nothing of the kind. They will look at your CV and recommend changes to it, even if your CV is fine as it is. Mine was actually created by a previous job broker firm, Standguide, but Peopleserve insisted on a complete revision. They can then, if I got work, claim to have made a change that helped me get a job, even if the job search was entirely my doing and they had nothing whatsoever to do with it.

You may also find your appearance criticized. I was told off for wearing jeans and having a beard. I wear a suit when attending interviews, but not for casual job searching. I was given a long talking to about how my self-esteem would improve if I tidied myself up. I can look tidy when required. The insinuation is that if you continue to be unemployed after their endless and repetitive confidence building, interview scenario, and CV workshops, it must be in some way is your own fault. I was told in all seriousness that one in four application forms leads to an interview and one in four interviews leads to a job, but I have sent over 150 job applications out, and received only 5 interviews, only one of which was even close to offering me a chance of a job. Their statistics are wish-fulfilment propaganda and garbage.

In fact, you often don’t get a job you apply for because of high competition, especially if other applicants are younger, (Ageism is a factor in unemployment and I am 48 as I write this). Applicants who do not have long periods of unemployment on their resumes, and have a wider skill range than you have will stand a better chance of getting the job than you do, or I do. My CV has a complex work history due to having had lots of temporary jobs, mostly through agency hire. Firms prefer to take on someone who has worked for only a few businesses, preferably in a similar industry to their own. My resume is a weave of shifting positions, and opportunities. It initially looks more diverse than it is, but my work history is far from linear. That often gets my CV and application forms rejected at first sight. It’s just complicated, and employers like to keep things simple. Also, in having been out of work for along time, I have actually heard many interview questions over and over gain, so my answers can sound a little over-confident, even arrogant. My cynical demeanour can lapse into making me seem quite jaded. If interviewers sense that, my chances of getting their jobs are stuffed. I bounce off the application and interview procedures rather too easily.

Stage 4 is itself divided into stages. The job broker arrangement only lasts 20 weeks. If you are still unemployed after that things can get unpleasant. As Stage 4a ends that you will be automatically put on Stage 4b, where you come onto the FND. This runs immediately like a strict and more severe version of the stage 4a initiative. Staff will have the same patronizing condescending air of religious cultists, but the hint of threat of stopping benefits for non-attendance or late arrivals increases. They often keep you waiting, but don’t dare do it to them. While on Stage 3 and 4a, you had to complete a weekly job diary yourself to submit as evidence of jobs you have applied for between visits, here the job broker has control of the diary, adding only the jobs from your list that s/he approves of. Of ten jobs you apply for only six might be written in for you. While on Stage 4a it was possible to pop into the office to post a few application forms and letters and move on, but at Stage 4b you now have to stay for a minimum of two hours and show what jobs you looked for in that time, or your expenses claims may not be dealt with. The veneer of pleasantness conceals a thinly disguised atmosphere of threat leaving the distinct impression that sanctions might be applied over any misunderstanding of your behaviour on their part and the pressure to succeed is often oppressive now.

At induction to this new 12-week period of heavily monitored job seeking activity, as I have endured at JHP, you face a barrage of paperwork, having to constantly sign and date papers and forms, often with several signatures on one single page. You have to produce several pieces of ID to prove you are you. You are then given a week or more to wait for an appointment with your new job broker. Though not told to in advance, I realized that I would certainly have to look for work in this period, and I took documents proving that I had sought work (unsuccessfully) between induction and my week one of 12 meeting (actually making the course 14 weeks long). The organizers set down the date for my appointment incorrectly, though fortunately I had heard the correct date and time mentioned verbally and I arrived on time. Make your own written notes of their meetings and appointments as well as depending on their information.

I was also not warned in advance of a mandatory test of Basic English and Arithmetic that took over an hour to complete on their computer and went way beyond the kind of tests set routinely by potential employers. I felt like I was re-sitting my A levels. To my surprise and relief my results were considered good on maths and excellent on English. .

Though I’d heard with trepidation, much talk of the Work Trials initiative, initially in tip-offs from my previous broker, I was now made very aware that it was about to become a reality for me. I was asked to find five employers I would like to work for under the scheme, before my second meeting. If I fail to find five, (or more likely if my five prove unsatisfactory), the people at JHP will find potential employers for me from their lists. I asked why this list was not made immediately available to me, but I got no answer. In effect, potential employers are being kept from me until my broker chooses to share their hidden stash of vacancies with me. However, these are not true vacancies at all, but a means to impose the below national minimum wage go past Go, collect £200 (actually considerably more) and get out of jail free card for the employers.

Having myself and others select employers to draw into the scheme plays several levels of greed and evil at once. For one thing it makes me have to collude in my own punishment for being unemployed and my own enslavement by having me actively seeking an employer to prostrate myself before. It helps stop me shouting foul play, though given that my benefit would stop if I did otherwise, I am taking such steps not from wilful collusion, but under intense unpleasant duress. I have no choice but to be a victim – It does not also make me a martyr.

I will naturally give priority to charities, as, if working for nothing, I see no reason to contribute to the profits of companies already earning millions without a need to exploit my unemployment in such a cruel greedy and heartless fashion. I may sadly have no choice but to put milk in the saucers for the fat cats though.

In getting me to select companies, I effectively help to advertise and promote the Work Trial program for Serco and its satellite broker firms. If the firm takes me on, Serco will soon be shovelling more of the long term unemployed their way too. In asking potential employers to take me on through the trial, I am giving myself to them for nothing, and inviting them to invite others for nothing to. Anyone then applying to the firm through conventional channels but not unreasonably expecting a real wage, finds their chances of gaining employment considerably reduced.

With time, unless the hateful scheme is stopped under law and government legislation New Deal will expand, being applied by more companies, and the period of forced unpaid work could grow from 4 weeks to 8, or more and risks potentially breaking the National Minimum Wage rule completely for all of us. The people working under the scheme have few long-term prospects, no true salary and virtually no unfair dismissal or tribunal rights. We are slaves in every definitional sense of the word. It feels more like a lawbreaker’s community service programme of work than any kind of employment I’ve ever been offered.

It has been asked why employers need a month to decide if an employee is suitable for a vacancy. A few days of shelf stacking should suffice, perhaps a week at best. You won’t do it more efficiently after thirty days than you do after just three. The duration of the trial is just giving employers more time not to pay the staff for being obliged to be there.

Be sure that if you apply for a job that it is not a work-trial vacancy. Some employers are taking on staff without making this clear to them. Staff only find out they are on a work trial and not to be paid, when they notice their wages aren’t being presented, and query it. Don’t work on a work trial unless you are obliged to. Companies may not be liable for you working there unless they have taken you on through the JSD brokers.

Once you have been on a work trial, it may be advisable not to log the experience on you CV resumes and application forms as you were still unemployed while working, and the stigma of having been forced into a work trial might be regarded in the same way as admitting to any criminal record in your past. It might deter real employers from touching you with a ten-foot barge pole.

HOW YOU MIGHT BE TREATED ON YOUR WORK TRIAL

It may be that you’ll be treated no different than any other employee of the company that hires you, and that you’ll fit in well, and be given duties as and when they arise. To all intents and purposes, you’ll enjoy the job in every respect other than a proper wage packet similar to that shared by the friends you make during your four-week forced labour period.

Though your work contribution may be genuinely appreciated, it is no guarantee that you will be kept on once your contract terminates. You may not know whether you are to be kept on or not until your last day, though the later you are invited to stay, the less likely it is. You may be told about not coming back as you are due to clock out at the close of your final shift. If you are being kept on, the news should be available as early as the end of your first week – your first few days will decide your fate, if it wasn’t sealed before you ever went to the company. You may not be told until the final week or few days though, making it awkward for you to plan anything for the days and weeks following your work trial.

You may be more unfortunate in getting to a company where you will be treated with contempt, given awful jobs the ordinary established staff dislike, such as tidying up spillages and even cleaning the toilets. The company knows you have no choice but to do what they wish, and they might rub it in, so you might face four weeks of living hell with bosses who make Captain Bligh of The SS Bounty seem like a decent sort of chap. This would be a company you’ll be glad to escape from once your zero wage contract ends – hope they don’t request you back.

At the other extreme, you may find yourself employed by a firm that simply has no idea how to employ you. They only really want you for the payments they receive from the Government for hiring you, in which case you may find that you get left in the canteen twiddling your thumbs most of the day, and occasionally invited to help someone who is struggling with a job they have once in a while. You may find your month long period of captivity boring. This firm seems certain not to want you back once its nest egg ends. They would have to pay you from there on in, and probably have no desire to do so.

Another problem with work trials is that the Welfare system and your job brokers will get reports on what you are like as an employee. Exactly what you were like for ordinary bosses you have worked for is largely a mystery to them, even if they know the basics, such as the length of time you were employed and why you left a firm (redundancy or dismissal). With a work trial, they get direct information on what you are like, whether you turn up on time, do the jobs correctly, don’t argue back, etc. You are no longer free to roam – your behaviour is monitored and you are very much held in captivity.

Criticisms raised by the TUC http://www.tuc.org.uk/extras/worktrials.pdf

“We think it is unfair to the individual when they do the same work as others but, unlike them, do not get paid for it.

There is a risk of exploitation. Some unscrupulous businesses will be attracted by the opportunity of getting unpaid workers, and will recruit people through Work Trials but with no intention of eventually hiring them.

There is a risk that workers who are paid the rate for the job will lose their jobs to unpaid workers.

There is also a risk that businesses that do not use unpaid workers will be at a competitive disadvantage, and their workers’ jobs will become insecure. (This also seems unfair to the business owners.) “

Though Cowards Flinch http://thoughcowardsflinch.com/2010/01/17/labours-minimum-wage-and-work-trials/ describe the scheme in a nutshell - “In essence, the programme is a direct subsidy to business from the government, advertised to employers as “Try Before You Buy”, with no obligation whatsoever to buy”

OTHER ONLINE CRITICISMS OF FLEXIBLE NEW DEAL, JHP, AND WORK TRIALS

http://www.workprogramme.org.uk/flexible-new-deal-provider-information.html

http://intensiveactivity.wordpress.com/2010/08/31/work-for-your-benefit-scheme-axed/

http://www.flexible-new-deal.co.uk/2009/11/11/flexible-new-deal-mandatory-work-related-activity/

http://don-paskini.blogspot.com/2010/11/why-workfare-wont-work.html

http://manchestermule.com/article/forced-labour-for-jobseekers

The Campaign Against Slave Labour http://www.noii.org.uk/2005/05/25/campaign-against-slave-labour/

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